The next time you hear a fellow American bemoaning the lack of Washington bipartisanship, tell him to cheer up. There is one issue on which Congress still resoundingly agrees: gun rights. Bear that in mind, too, the next time you read a story about the "new" political debate over gun control.

An almost cosmic disconnect has been building in the political sphere since the tragedy of Sandy Hook. On the one side is the gun-control community, which sniffed a rare political opening and is determined to use it to the max. Vice President Joe Biden's gun-violence task force has given that community a vehicle for its ambitions, even as it has encouraged it to ramp up its demands.

By this week, the elites were calling for a gun-control agenda unmatched in modern times. The closing of the gun-show "loophole"? Restrictions on large-capacity clips? An "assault weapons" ban? They want all that, plus a national gun database, and a background check for every gun sale, and similar checks for ammunition sales, and regulation of Internet transactions, and Michael Bloomberg crowned emperor. (A position for which Mr. Bloomberg no doubt believes himself suited.) The media have reported all this as rational, reasonable and doable.

On the other side is the reality that any of these proposals must, in the normal course of things, pass Congress. A few quick facts about that body. 1) More than half of its members have an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association. 2) The few members today calling for gun control are the same few who have always called for gun control. 3) The House is run by Republicans.

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Vice President Joe Biden, with Attorney General Eric Holder beside him..Despite the press's exuberant efforts to cast congressional gun supporters as having changed their minds, there has been no actual movement. Senate Democrat Joe Manchin caused a media sensation when he declared, immediately after Sandy Hook, that nobody needed "30 rounds in a clip." Less reported was that it took the Democrat about the time necessary for your average West Virginian to drive to a ballot box to clarify that statement and to add that he's "so proud of the NRA." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with the press's best efforts to parse his remarks, has committed himself to nothing more than a "thoughtful debate."

Montana's Jon Tester and Max Baucus, Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas's Mark Pryor, South Dakota's Tim Johnson, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu—all are quiet on that red-state Democratic front. North Dakota's brand new senator, Heidi Heitkamp, declared proposals mulled by the Biden task force as "way in the extreme" and "not gonna pass." Unlike Mr. Obama, all of these members still face elections.

Over in the House, when asked recently what was more likely—passage of gun control or Speaker John Boehner becoming a pagan—a senior GOP leadership aide told Buzzfeed: "Probably the latter."

Even were the Senate to summon 60 votes (unlikely), and even were Mr. Boehner to risk the renewed wrath of his caucus by moving such a bill (crazy unlikely), any legislation would fall to members such as Virginia's Bob Goodlatte (who runs the Judiciary Committee) and Pete Sessions (who runs the Rules Committee). Mr. Goodlatte is strong on gun rights. Mr. Sessions is from Texas.

Add to this one consequence of President Obama's intransigence on a debt solution: His other priorities are in limbo. Mr. Biden will announce his recommendations next week, just as Congress prepares to tackle the debt ceiling. At what point will Democrats have the spare bandwidth to address gun control? Also open to question is whether the White House intends to spend its political capital on that perilous subject, rather than on presidential priorities like immigration reform.

The White House is playing its usual fuzzy double-game. Does it intend to stick to mental-health recommendations and slough off on Congress any gun decisions? Or does it intend to embrace gun control in its liberal remake of the country? Was the leak that the Biden task force is debating big gun restrictions a signal of a fight to come? Or was it a deliberate head fake—to make smaller proposals look more reasonable? No one has a clue.

Whatever the White House intends, it is already in a tough position. The task-force leak, combined with Mr. Biden's tantalizing suggestion of a gun-related executive order, has seriously raised expectations. Anything less than the dismantling of the Second Amendment will earn Mr. Obama a lambasting from his left.

At the same time, the more sweeping any gun proposals, the more dead on arrival they will be in Congress. Mr. Obama might know that and be planning to take credit for going big while blaming failure on Congress. If so, he'll have to beat on his own party.

He might instead consider that gun rights are an excellent—and rare—example of an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have for some time been on common ground, and in which they have honestly represented their constituents. Last heard, that was exactly the sort of bipartisanship the president claimed to want more of.

Yeah, I remember watching that yesterday on Yeager's facebook page........You know that moment when you realize you're watching a car wreck happening and there's nothing you can do to stop it? Yeah......It was one of those obvious moments of 'Oh my god, this isn't going to end well'.,........But if Yeager's goal was to become the lightening rod for this entire conflict, he succeeded in that in spades.......yikes!

Once cowed at the thought of provoking Second Amendment supporters, leftists will soon attempt to ban “assault weapons” (and much more) as legislation offered by Dianne Feinstein makes its way to the Senate floor. It seems that D.C. liberals have finally become convinced that American gun owners are too cowardly, too lazy or too dependent upon the generosity of Big Brother to fight for their Second Amendment rights.

During the past four years, the gun banning-Left have watched as American buyers broke sales records in the purchase of semi-automatic rifles. Opting for these and other powerful, efficient weapons, it is estimated that some 100 million private citizens are now in possession of over 300 million firearms. And these numbers continue to grow with each passing month.

Yet it’s against this backdrop of America’s unprecedented determination to assert the fundamental permanence of Second Amendment guarantees that Diane Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama and others will choose to implement gun bans, demand the federal registration of firearms, and even legislate outright confiscation.

Maybe Democrats are confident that fallout from Sandy Hook will provide the floor votes necessary to disarm the American people. But if the Left is willing to risk picking this fight with millions of American gun owners, it must also believe something far more important—that Americans who have spent years arming themselves against the ultimate expression of tyranny by their own government–the overthrow of the Second Amendment– will choose to not fight when the time finally comes.

For decades, the Left have watched Americans simply “lie down” before every imaginable outrage and legislative assault on our liberty. The Constitution has been prostituted by power-hungry, America-hating Marxists in Congress, on the federal bench and in the White House. Elected officials have laughed when asked to provide Constitutional authority for the passage of massively unpopular pieces of legislation. Tax dollars are insolently manipulated to purchase votes, grease the skids of questionable legislation, and add to the wealth of bureaucrats and elected officials. And through it all, Americans are robbed of more and more liberty as we do nothing but “vote ‘em in and cuss ‘em out” every two years.

Liberals have come to depend upon the willingness of Americans to subordinate their desire for liberty to the wishes and whims of the political ruling class. The cowardly are rewarded for relenting while those with the courage to question dictatorial authority and refuse to submit are accused of domestic terrorism. And all who press their own beliefs—or worse, those of the nations’ Founders– are met with ridicule or intimidation in what was at one time a nation of free, thinking individuals.

In short, the Left has come to expect cowardice or disinterested submission from a people trained for decades to accept as given that the good intentions of their elected betters are sufficient to fulfill the requirements of constitutional authority. And it’s a safe bet neither Democrats nor RINO’s will expect anything different from the majority of Americans this time around as Feinstein and Company legislate last rites and a funeral for the Second Amendment.

Once cowed at the thought of provoking Second Amendment supporters, leftists will soon attempt to ban “assault weapons” (and much more) as legislation offered by Dianne Feinstein makes its way to the Senate floor. It seems that D.C. liberals have finally become convinced that American gun owners are too cowardly, too lazy or too dependent upon the generosity of Big Brother to fight for their Second Amendment rights.

During the past four years, the gun banning-Left have watched as American buyers broke sales records in the purchase of semi-automatic rifles. Opting for these and other powerful, efficient weapons, it is estimated that some 100 million private citizens are now in possession of over 300 million firearms. And these numbers continue to grow with each passing month.

Yet it’s against this backdrop of America’s unprecedented determination to assert the fundamental permanence of Second Amendment guarantees that Diane Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama and others will choose to implement gun bans, demand the federal registration of firearms, and even legislate outright confiscation.

Maybe Democrats are confident that fallout from Sandy Hook will provide the floor votes necessary to disarm the American people. But if the Left is willing to risk picking this fight with millions of American gun owners, it must also believe something far more important—that Americans who have spent years arming themselves against the ultimate expression of tyranny by their own government–the overthrow of the Second Amendment– will choose to not fight when the time finally comes.

For decades, the Left have watched Americans simply “lie down” before every imaginable outrage and legislative assault on our liberty. The Constitution has been prostituted by power-hungry, America-hating Marxists in Congress, on the federal bench and in the White House. Elected officials have laughed when asked to provide Constitutional authority for the passage of massively unpopular pieces of legislation. Tax dollars are insolently manipulated to purchase votes, grease the skids of questionable legislation, and add to the wealth of bureaucrats and elected officials. And through it all, Americans are robbed of more and more liberty as we do nothing but “vote ‘em in and cuss ‘em out” every two years.

Liberals have come to depend upon the willingness of Americans to subordinate their desire for liberty to the wishes and whims of the political ruling class. The cowardly are rewarded for relenting while those with the courage to question dictatorial authority and refuse to submit are accused of domestic terrorism. And all who press their own beliefs—or worse, those of the nations’ Founders– are met with ridicule or intimidation in what was at one time a nation of free, thinking individuals.

In short, the Left has come to expect cowardice or disinterested submission from a people trained for decades to accept as given that the good intentions of their elected betters are sufficient to fulfill the requirements of constitutional authority. And it’s a safe bet neither Democrats nor RINO’s will expect anything different from the majority of Americans this time around as Feinstein and Company legislate last rites and a funeral for the Second Amendment.

I think they seriously underestimate the divide in this country, and the degree to which one half of this country resents them and outright despises what they perceive as the excesses and overreach of their political ideology in power. I think they don't realize that a significant minority of Americans see the union as nearly irreparably broken already, and are already expecting that this is going to come to a head somehow in the very near future. They live in a different circle, a different culture, that allows them to believe they are compeletely triumphant and that now they can remake America and the world in their image without any resistance whatsoever. I suspect that the reality will not be quite that.

Americans Buy Enough Guns in Last Two Months to Outfit the Entire Chinese and Indian ArmiesPosted by Jim Hoft on Monday, January 14, 2013, 6:42 AM Honest Americans Bought Enough Guns in November and December to Outfit the Entire Chinese and Indian Armies

The Obama Administration is the number one threat to the nation’s gun rights advocates. In the four years since Barack Obama was first elected president in November 2008, an estimated 67 million firearms have been purchased in the United States. In November a record 2 million guns were sold in America. This was followed up by another record in December. 2.7 million guns were sold in America in the last month of 2012.

FBI.gov

To put this in perspective.Chinese and Indian Standing Army Numbers:

•China- There are 2.29 active members in the Chinese Army.

•India- There are 1.13 active members in the Indian Army.

There were enough guns sold in the US in November and December to outfit each active member of the Chinese and Indian armies with a brand new gun.

Honoring the second amendment has two different meanings. Gun rights are good, important and justified, but that is just part of it. The larger meaning I think is the second amendment is symbolic of the guarantee that the entire constitutional, limited government framework continues, and is not taken away either by elected majorities, unelected bureaucracy or a foreign aggressor.

It is ironic in the extreme to see that the effort to get us have fewer guns has led to perhaps the biggest peacetime surge in the weapons ownership in world history - enough to arm China or India!

(It could just be more people reading the forum, with GM recommending guns, ammo and canned food throughout the economic crisis.)

Liberal-fascist incompetence is not new or surprising. The war on poverty accelerated the foundations of poverty and more recently the attempt to take fossil fuels away from us to with high prices led to a huge surge in fossil fuel production.

Post-1812 and since the full settlement of the heartland with all these guns in private ownership we have taken hits like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, but no one other than our own oppressive government has ever really tried to invade or take us over by force. Not all of our nation's defenses are controlled by Washington.

I would say that a significant MAJORITY of Americans support our gun rights and a significant minority would entertain notions of resistance.

I would say you're right......If even 1% of gun owners took significant action, that would be about 1 million men and women (by way of comparison there are only 800,000 police officers.......1.4 Million Active Duty military and 1.4 Million reserve).......To complicate the numbers further, many of those MOST likely to resist are among those 800,000 police officers AND 3 million active and reserve (among the most conservative members of society)........'One in Three Americans Personally Own a Gun'

Tuesday, January 15, 2013Texas Proposal: JAIL Any Federal Officials Trying to Enforce New Gun Restrictions in the Statemeasure would make any federal firearms legislation passed by Congress or approved by Presidential order unenforceable in TexasJim Forsyth

A Texas lawmaker says he plans to file the Firearms Protection Act, which would make any federal laws that may be passed by Congress or imposed by Presidential order which would ban or restrict ownership of semi-automatic firearms or limit the size of gun magazines illegal in the state, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Republican Rep. Steve Toth says his measure also calls for felony criminal charges to be filed against any federal official who tries to enforce the rule in the state.

"If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution," Toth told 1200 WOAI's Joe Pags Tuesday. He says his bill would make attempting to enforce a federal gun ban in Texas punishable by a $50,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Toth says he will file his measure after speaking with the state's Republican Attorney General, Greg Abbott, who has already vowed to fight any federal measures which call for restrictions on weapons possession.

Toth concedes that he would welcome a legal fight over his proposals.

"At some point there needs to be a showdown between the states and the federal government over the Supremacy Clause," he said.

The Supremacy Clause is the portion of the Constitution which declares that federal laws and statutes are 'the supreme law of the land.'

"It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama," Toth said.

Texas is the second state to propose a measure to shield the state from the impact of any gun possession restrictions imposed by Congress or by Presidential order. A similar measure was introduced in Wyoming last week.

Jackson County Kentucky Sheriff Denny Peyman is making it clear that no law that violates the Constitution will be upheld in his county.This especially applies to new gun control edicts Obama & Co. are trying to push onto the American people.Said Peyman: "My office will not comply with any federal action which violates the United States Constitution or the Kentucky Constitution which I swore uphold."And far from worrying about repercussions for doing this, Peyman sees the gun control push as a sign of weakness that will crumble in the face of real opposition: "Just a few of us have to be willing to stand up to political opposition putting our people at risk. The other side will back down."

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have found a patriot. And his name is Sheriff Denny Peyman.

What must she have done to warrant experiencing the historically proven, natural progression of GUN CONTROL?

Did she practice a religion that no longer had the Government's favor?

Did she speak out against the Government?

Did she not pay her taxes?

Did she have too many children?

Did she get caught with an assault rifle?

Whatever she did, she is one of over 170 million people who have been exterminated by their governments, AFTER the governments enacted strict gun control to disarm their populations.

Can't happen here? WHY NOT?

I'll bet she didn't think it could happen to her, in her country, in her lifetime either.

The POWER we give away to the Government TODAY, by allowing them to take away our rights and ability to defend ourselves against enemies foreign and domestic, WILL BE USED ON US TOMORROW. It is not a question of IF, but rather a question of WHEN.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!

STUDY YOUR HISTORY. Here it is...

Watch the documentary Innocents Betrayed, I co-produced with Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. I co-produced Innocents Betrayed because it dramatically and irrefutably documents the direct connections between government gun control schemes and the subsequent genocides that have taken the lives of over 170 million people!

Interesting, the first photo is older and has PLA troops, though they could be the People's Armed Police, that wear similar uniforms. The blue uniforms below are the normally unarmed "Jing Cha" Public Security Bureau police. They do most police duties in the cities and immigration/Customs at the airports.

Updated at 05:45 PM todayTags:new york city, albany, gun control, new york news, jim hoffer Comment NowEmailPrintReport a typo Jim Hoffer More: Bio, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Stories by Jim Hoffer, News Team Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK (WABC) -- It appears someone forgot to exempt police officers from the ban of ammunition clips with more than 7 bullets in New York State's new gun control law.

It's a big oversight that apparently happened in the haste by the Cuomo Administration to get a tough package of gun-control measures signed into law.

On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the sweeping gun measure, the nation's toughest. It includes a ban on the possession of high-capacity magazines.

Related ContentMore: Follow us @EyewitnessNYCMore: Get AlertsSpecifically, magazines with more than 7 rounds will be illegal under the new law.

The problem as the statute is currently written does NOT exempt law enforcement officers.

The NYPD, the State Police and virtually every law enforcement agency in the state carry 9-milli-meter guns, which have a 15-round capacity.

Unless an exemption is added by the time the law takes effect in March, police would technically be in violation of the new gun measure.

Within the last hour, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association President released a statement saying, "The PBA is actively working to enact changes to this law that will provide the appropriate exemptions from the law for active and retired law enforcement officers."

State Senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD Captain, told us he's going to push for an amendment next week to exempt police officers from the high-capacity magazine ban. In his words, "You can't give more ammo to the criminals"

A spokesman for the Governor's office called us to say, "We are still working out some details of the law and the exemption will be included."

Obama Goes Nuts and OffersAnti-gunners Wish ListMost of his crazy proposals are so extreme,only few of his initiatives pose serious threat

Surrounded by child-props, Barack Obama yesterday proposed a semi-automatic ban so extreme that it could potentially outlaw up to 50% of all long guns in circulation and up to 80% of all handguns.

Originally, Obama's allies had announced they would reintroduce the 1994 ban on commonly-owned, defensive firearms. That was until they found out that they would look like fools, since that semi-auto ban was largely the law of Connecticut on the day the Newtown shooting occurred -- and didn't cover Adam Lanza's AR-15. After that, gun grabbers just kept adding more and more guns until they would register (or ban) a huge percentage of the defensive guns in existence.

So where are we now?

Obama's crazy gun ban is now being denounced by many Democrats. And, although you don't "pop the cork" until Congress adjourns, it will probably take the magazine ban down the toilet with it.

This means that gun owners' focus must now shift to the part of Obama's agenda which poses the most danger because it is most likely to move: the requirement that the government approve every gun transfer in America -- the so-called universal background check.

All of you know why this is a problem. But how do you explain it so simply that even a congressman can understand? Let's take a crack at that:

ONE: THE FBI'S "SECRET LIST" WHICH IS BEING USED TO BAR AMERICANS FROM OWNING GUNS IS INSIDIOUS

The FBI’s database currently contains the names of more than 150,000 veterans. They served their country honorably. They did nothing wrong. But, because they sought counseling for a traumatic experience while risking their lives for America, they have had their constitutional rights summarily revoked, with no due process whatsoever.

You want to know something else? The "secret list" could soon include tens of millions of Americans -- including soldiers, police, and fire fighters -- with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and even post-partem depression. This would be achieved under the 23 anti-gun "executive actions" that Obama announced yesterday.

TWO: THE FBI REFUSES TO INSURE US THAT IT ISN'T TURNING ITS "SECRET LIST" INTO A NATIONAL GUN REGISTRY

Our legislative counsel drafted the Smith amendment in 1998 to prohibit the FBI from using the Brady Check system to tax gun buyers or put their names into a gun registry. But the FBI refuses to tell us -- or even to tell U.S. Senators -- how (or whether) it is complying with the Smith amendment. Why in the world should we give the FBI more authority and more names if it abuses the authority it already has?

This is the inherent problem with any background check, where gun buyers’ names are given to a government bureaucrat. Is there any way to make sure that once a name is entered into a computer, that it doesn’t stay there permanently?

This concern is especially valid, considering how federal agents are already skirting the laws against gun owner registration. Several dealers around the country have informed GOA that the ATF is increasingly going into gun shops and just xeroxing all of the 4473's, giving them the names of every gun owner who purchased a gun through that shop -- and setting up the basis for a national registration system.

This is illegal under the 1986 McClure-Volkmer law, but that has apparently not stopped it from being done. If every gun in America has to go through a dealer, this will create a mechanism to compile a list of every gun owner in America. And, as we have seen with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has just been legislatively handed such a list, when that happens, the talk immediately turns to “confiscation."

THREE: AS A RESULT, REQUIRING GOVERNMENT APPROVAL OF EVERY GUN OWNER IN AMERICA WOULD DO NOTHING BUT CREATE A PLATFORM FOR NATIONAL GUN REGISTRATION AND CONFISCATION.

As alluded to above, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now has a comprehensive gun registry. This is the most dangerous thing that New York legislators could have done -- as Cuomo has made it clear he’s considering gun confiscation of lawfully-owned firearms.

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” Cuomo said. “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option -- keep your gun but permit it.”

How nice. He’ll let gun owners “permit” their guns for now -- so that, presumably, they can be confiscated later, just as certain defensive weapons were confiscated in New York City during the Mayor David Dinkins administration in 1991.

FOUR: THE FBI REFUSES TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW GUARANTEEING THE RIGHTS OF LEGITIMATE PURCHASERS

The Brady Law requires that the FBI correct erroneous denials of firearms purchases. And it requires that it reply, initially, within five days. According to attorneys familiar with the problem, the FBI NEVER, EVER, EVER complies with the law. In fact, it increasingly tells aggrieved legitimate purchasers to "sue us" -- at a potential cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

FIVE: EVEN UNDER CURRENT LAW, THE BRADY SYSTEM HAS BROKEN DOWN REPEATEDLY

Since its inception, the FBI’s computer systems have often gone offline for hours at a time -- sometimes for days. And when it fails on weekends, it results in the virtual blackout of gun sales at gun shows across the country.

According to gun laws expert Alan Korwin, "With the NICS computer out of commission, the only place you could legally buy a firearm -- in the whole country -- was from a private individual, since all dealers were locked out of business by the FBI’s computer problem."

Of course, now the President wants to eliminate that last bastion of freedom!

Recently, the FBI’s system went down on Black Friday, angering many gun dealers and gun buyers around the country. “It means we can’t sell no damn guns,” said Rick Lozier, a manager at Van Raymond Outfitters in Maine. “If we can’t call it in, we can’t sell a gun. It’s cost us some money.”

The bottom line: Our goal is to insure that Obama's politicized dog-and-pony show doesn't produce one word of new gun law. Not a single word.

And the biggest danger right now is universal background checks -- which would create a platform for national registration and confiscation.

We would note that, in addition, Obama is attempting to illegally enact gun control through unlawful and unconstitutional "executive actions." Click here to read about these.

ACTION: Click here to contact your senators and congressman. Urge them to oppose the universal background check because it is a platform for national firearms registration and confiscation

Forget Wal-Mart and skip your local gun show. The murderers of tomorrow will not be found wearing orange vests at your local sporting goods store. They won’t have NRA memberships or trophies on their walls.

You won’t find them in America. Look for them in Obamerica.

67% of firearm murders took place in the country’s 50 largest metro areas. The 62 cities in those metro areas have a firearm murder rate of 9.7, more than twice the national average. Among teenagers the firearm murder rate is 14.6 or almost three times the national average.

Those are the crowded cities of Obamerica. Those are the places with the most restrictive gun control laws and the highest crime rates. And many of them have been run by Democrats and their political machines for almost as long as they have been broken.

Obama won every major city in the election, except for Jacksonville and Salt Lake City. And the higher the death rate, the bigger his victory.

He won New Orleans by 80 to 17 where the murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. He won Detroit, where the murder rate of 53 per 100,000 people is the second highest in the country and twice as high as any country in the world, including the Congo and South Africa. He won it 73 to 26. And then he celebrated his victory in Chicago where the murder rate is three times the statewide average.

These places aren’t America. They’re Obamerica.

In 2006, the 54% of the population living in those 50 metro areas was responsible for 67% of armed killings nationwide. Those are disproportionate numbers especially when you consider that for the people living in most of those cities walking into a store and legally buying a gun is all but impossible.

Mayors of Obamerican cities blame guns because it’s easier than blaming people and now the President of Obamerica has turned to the same shameless tactic. The NRA counters that people kill people, but that’s exactly why Obamerican leaders would rather talk about the guns.

Chicago, the capital of Obamerica, is a city run by gangs and politicians. It has 68,000 gang members, four times the number of police officers. Chicago politicians solicit the support of gang members in their campaigns, accepting laundered contributions from them, hiring their members and tipping them off about upcoming police raids. And their biggest favor to the gang bosses is doing nothing about the epidemic of gang violence.

80% of Chicago’s murders are gang-related. But in 1999 when a bill came up in the Illinois State Senate to charge anyone carrying out a firearm attack on school property as an adult, a law that would have largely affected gang members, the future leader of Obamerica voted present. Had he not voted present, it is doubtful that he would have been reelected in an area where gang leaders wield a great deal of influence.

The majority of murders in the cities with the worst homicide rates are gang-related. And while it isn’t always possible to be certain whether a killing was gang-related, the majority of homicide victims in city after city have been found to have criminal records.

In 2010, there were 11,078 firearm homicides in the United States and over 2,000 known gang-related killings, over 90% of which are carried out with firearms. Since 1981, Los Angeles alone has had 16,000 gang related homicides. That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is what Obamerica looks like. It’s a place where life is cheap and illegal guns are as available as illegal drugs. It’s the war that we aren’t talking about, because it’s easier to talk about the inanimate objects being used to fight that war.

There are, as John Edwards said, two Americas. America is a country that runs pretty well. And then there’s Obamerica. Not all of Obamerica is broken, but a lot of it is. America does not have a gun violence problem. Obamerica does. And Obamerica has a gun violence problem for the same reason that it has a drug problem and a broken family problem.

Democratic leaders and machines, combined with social workers and justice crusaders have run Obamerica into the ground. Obamerican cities used to be the homes of industry and progress. Now they’re places where young Black and Hispanic men kill each other in growing numbers.

America does not need gun control. It is a mostly law-abiding place. And gun control cannot help Obamerica. Not when its murder rate is driven by gangs who have no trouble obtaining anything; whether it’s legal in the United States or not.

This country does not need to have a conversation about how many bullets should go in a clip. It does need to have a conversation about how many parents should go in a family. It needs to talk about the ghettos of Obamerica and have a serious conversation about broken families and generational dependency.

Obama has become a role model to millions of people in the black community. If anyone can address these problems, it’s him. But instead of trying to solve the problems of Obamerica, instead of doing something about the high levels of unemployment, the broken families and the glamorization of drug dealing and violent crime, he wimped out and picked a fight with rural America.

AIDS prevention was sabotaged by the claim that the disease was a general problem spreading through the population. It wasn’t. Neither is gun violence.

Adam Lanza is as much of a poster boy for gun violence, as Ryan White was for AIDS. A better poster boy for gun violence might be Jay-Z, who boasts of having been a drug dealer and claims to have shot his brother at the age of 12. The drug dealer to millionaire rapper is the Horatio Alger story of Obamerica. And Jay-Z can be seen partying with Obama.

If Obama really wants to get serious about gun violence, then all he has to do is turn to the man standing next to him. But Obama, like every Chicago politician before him, don’t want to end the violence. The death toll is profitable, not just for rappers writing bad poetry about dealing drugs and shooting rivals, but for the politicians atop that heap who score money and gain power by using the problems of Obamerica as some sort of call to conscience for the rest of the country.

That’s what Obama is doing now. Hiding behind Newtown and adorable little kids is the grim specter of Obamerica’s death toll. It’s buried inside the gruesome figures of how many Americans are shot each year issued as an indictment against the entire country in general and gun owners in particular. But those numbers are not an indictment of America. They are an indictment of Democratic mayors and liberal social policy. They are an indictment of Obama.

We need to set aside the same old tired social justice rhetoric and have a serious conversation about what is wrong with New Orleans, Detroit and Chicago. And we need to do it before it’s too late.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Updated at 05:45 PM todayTags:new york city, albany, gun control, new york news, jim hoffer Comment NowEmailPrintReport a typo Jim Hoffer More: Bio, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Stories by Jim Hoffer, News Team Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK (WABC) -- It appears someone forgot to exempt police officers from the ban of ammunition clips with more than 7 bullets in New York State's new gun control law.

It's a big oversight that apparently happened in the haste by the Cuomo Administration to get a tough package of gun-control measures signed into law.

On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the sweeping gun measure, the nation's toughest. It includes a ban on the possession of high-capacity magazines.

Related ContentMore: Follow us @EyewitnessNYCMore: Get AlertsSpecifically, magazines with more than 7 rounds will be illegal under the new law.

The problem as the statute is currently written does NOT exempt law enforcement officers.

The NYPD, the State Police and virtually every law enforcement agency in the state carry 9-milli-meter guns, which have a 15-round capacity.

Unless an exemption is added by the time the law takes effect in March, police would technically be in violation of the new gun measure.

Within the last hour, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association President released a statement saying, "The PBA is actively working to enact changes to this law that will provide the appropriate exemptions from the law for active and retired law enforcement officers."

State Senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD Captain, told us he's going to push for an amendment next week to exempt police officers from the high-capacity magazine ban. In his words, "You can't give more ammo to the criminals"

A spokesman for the Governor's office called us to say, "We are still working out some details of the law and the exemption will be included."

I think it's very important that they don't exempt the police..........If you only need 7 rounds to defend yourself, that should be sufficient. I saw that as a 15 year police veteran. What's good for the goose......

As to gun registration, it's necessary to impose mandatory registration before confiscation can occur. If you allow people the illusion that they can keep their guns if they register them, they will register them. Then you can come back and confiscate what is registered. If you simply demand they turn them in, the non-complicance rate will be extraordinarily high and currently the government has no idea where all those guns are.

Updated at 05:45 PM todayTags:new york city, albany, gun control, new york news, jim hoffer Comment NowEmailPrintReport a typo Jim Hoffer More: Bio, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Stories by Jim Hoffer, News Team Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK (WABC) -- It appears someone forgot to exempt police officers from the ban of ammunition clips with more than 7 bullets in New York State's new gun control law.

It's a big oversight that apparently happened in the haste by the Cuomo Administration to get a tough package of gun-control measures signed into law.

On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the sweeping gun measure, the nation's toughest. It includes a ban on the possession of high-capacity magazines.

Related ContentMore: Follow us @EyewitnessNYCMore: Get AlertsSpecifically, magazines with more than 7 rounds will be illegal under the new law.

The problem as the statute is currently written does NOT exempt law enforcement officers.

The NYPD, the State Police and virtually every law enforcement agency in the state carry 9-milli-meter guns, which have a 15-round capacity.

Unless an exemption is added by the time the law takes effect in March, police would technically be in violation of the new gun measure.

Within the last hour, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association President released a statement saying, "The PBA is actively working to enact changes to this law that will provide the appropriate exemptions from the law for active and retired law enforcement officers."

State Senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD Captain, told us he's going to push for an amendment next week to exempt police officers from the high-capacity magazine ban. In his words, "You can't give more ammo to the criminals"

A spokesman for the Governor's office called us to say, "We are still working out some details of the law and the exemption will be included."

I think it's very important that they don't exempt the police..........If you only need 7 rounds to defend yourself, that should be sufficient. I saw that as a 15 year police veteran. What's good for the goose......

As to gun registration, it's necessary to impose mandatory registration before confiscation can occur. If you allow people the illusion that they can keep their guns if they register them, they will register them. Then you can come back and confiscate what is registered. If you simply demand they turn them in, the non-complicance rate will be extraordinarily high and currently the government has no idea where all those guns are.

Imagine the logistics involved for the NYPD to find 7 rnd. mags for their duty weapons and collecting all the non-standard mags. They're in crisis at 1PP over this, I'll bet.

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”

The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.

As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.

There were two parts of the contempt resolution. Holder was, and still is, in both civil and criminal contempt of Congress. The criminal resolution was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen–who works for Holder–for prosecution. Despite being technically required by law to bring forth criminal charges against Holder, under orders from Holder’s Department of Justice Machen chose to ignore the resolution.

The second part of the contempt resolution–civil contempt of Congress–allowed House Republicans to hire legal staff to challenge President Obama’s assertion of the executive privilege. That lawsuit remains ongoing despite Holder’s and the DOJ’s attempt to dismiss it and settle it.

It’s unclear what’s in the documents Obama asserted privilege over, but the president’s use of the extraordinary power appears weak. There are two types of presidential executive privilege: the presidential communications privilege and the deliberative process privilege. Use of the presidential communications privilege would require that the president himself or his senior-most advisers were involved in the discussions.

Since the president and his cabinet-level officials continually claim they had no knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious until early 2011 when the information became public–and Holder claims he didn’t read the briefing documents he was sent that outlined the scandal and how guns were walking while the operation was ongoing–Obama says he’s using the less powerful deliberative process privilege.

The reason why Obama’s assertion of that deliberative process privilege over these documents is weak at best is because the Supreme Court has held that such a privilege assertion is invalidated by even the suspicion of government wrongdoing. Obama, Holder, the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and virtually everyone else involved in this scandal have admitted that government wrongdoing actually took place in Operation Fast and Furious.

In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” about 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers they allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

The Fast and Furious scandal and more is covered in detail in the New York Times best-selling book Corruption Chronicles.

Putting OFF down the memory hole appears to be the model for Benghazigate as well.

==================================

The Facts About Assault Weapons and Crime .By JOHN R. LOTT JR.

Warning about "weapons designed for the theater of war," President Obama on Wednesday called for immediate action on a new Federal Assault Weapons Ban. He said that "more of our fellow Americans might still be alive" if the original assault weapons ban, passed in 1994, had not expired in 2004. Last month, in the wake of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) promised to introduce an updated version of the ban. She too warned of the threat posed by "military weapons."

After the nightmare of Newtown, their concern is understandable. Yet despite being at the center of the gun-control debate for decades, neither President Obama nor Ms. Feinstein (the author of the 1994 legislation) seems to understand the leading research on the effects of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. In addition, they continue to mislabel the weapons they seek to ban.

Ms. Feinstein points to two studies by criminology professors Chris Koper and Jeff Roth for the National Institute of Justice to back up her contention that the ban reduced crime. She claims that their first study in 1997 showed that the ban decreased "total gun murders." In fact, the authors wrote: "the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect (i.e., that the effect was different from zero)."

Messrs. Koper and Roth suggested that after the ban had been in effect for more years it might be possible to find a benefit. Seven years later, in 2004, they published a follow-up study for the National Institute of Justice with fellow criminologist Dan Woods that concluded, "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence."

Moreover, none of the weapons banned under the 1994 legislation or the updated version are "military" weapons. The killer in Newtown used a Bushmaster .223. This weapon bears a cosmetic resemblance to the M-16, which has been used by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. The call has frequently been made that there is "no reason" for such "military-style weapons" to be available to civilians.

Yes, the Bushmaster and the AK-47 are "military-style weapons." But the key word is "style"—they are similar to military guns in their cosmetics, not in the way they operate. The guns covered by the original were not the fully automatic machine guns used by the military, but semiautomatic versions of those guns.

The civilian version of the Bushmaster uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles, fires at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage. The civilian version of the AK-47 is similar, though it fires a much larger bullet—.30 inches in diameter, as opposed to the .223 inch rounds used by the Bushmaster. No self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian version of these guns.

A common question is: "Why do people need a semiautomatic Bushmaster to go out and kill deer?" The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon.

But the point isn't to help hunters. Semiautomatic weapons also protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require you to physically reload the gun may not do people a lot of good when they are facing multiple criminals or when their first shot misses or fails to stop an attacker.

Since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000 people. One should also bear in mind that just 2.6% of all murders are committed using any type of rifle.

The large-capacity ammunition magazines used by some of these killers are also misunderstood. The common perception that so-called "assault weapons" can hold larger magazines than hunting rifles is simply wrong. Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles. A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. The 1994 legislation banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets yet had no effect on crime rates.

Ms. Feinstein's new proposal also calls for gun registration, and the reasoning is straightforward: If a gun has been left at a crime scene and it was registered to the person who committed the crime, the registry will link the crime gun back to the criminal.

Nice logic, but in reality it hardly ever works that way. Guns are very rarely left behind at a crime scene. When they are, they're usually stolen or unregistered. Criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind guns that are registered to them. Even in the few cases where registered guns are left at crime scenes, it is usually because the criminal has been seriously injured or killed, so these crimes would have been solved even without registration.

Canada recently got rid of its costly "long-gun" registry for rifles in part because the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police could not provide a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a gun murder.

If we finally want to deal seriously with multiple-victim public shootings, it's time that we acknowledge a common feature of these attacks: With just a single exception, the attack in Tucson last year, every public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has occurred in a place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms. Had some citizens been armed, they might have been able to stop the killings before the police got to the scene. In the Newtown attack, it took police 20 minutes to arrive at the school after the first calls for help.

The Bushmaster, like any gun, is indeed very dangerous, but it is not a weapon "designed for the theater of war." Banning assault weapons will not make Americans safer.

Mr. Lott is a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, third edition, 2010).

Updated at 05:45 PM todayTags:new york city, albany, gun control, new york news, jim hoffer Comment NowEmailPrintReport a typo Jim Hoffer More: Bio, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Stories by Jim Hoffer, News Team Eyewitness NewsNEW YORK (WABC) -- It appears someone forgot to exempt police officers from the ban of ammunition clips with more than 7 bullets in New York State's new gun control law.

It's a big oversight that apparently happened in the haste by the Cuomo Administration to get a tough package of gun-control measures signed into law.

On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the sweeping gun measure, the nation's toughest. It includes a ban on the possession of high-capacity magazines.

Related ContentMore: Follow us @EyewitnessNYCMore: Get AlertsSpecifically, magazines with more than 7 rounds will be illegal under the new law.

The problem as the statute is currently written does NOT exempt law enforcement officers.

The NYPD, the State Police and virtually every law enforcement agency in the state carry 9-milli-meter guns, which have a 15-round capacity.

Unless an exemption is added by the time the law takes effect in March, police would technically be in violation of the new gun measure.

Within the last hour, the Patrolman's Benevolent Association President released a statement saying, "The PBA is actively working to enact changes to this law that will provide the appropriate exemptions from the law for active and retired law enforcement officers."

State Senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD Captain, told us he's going to push for an amendment next week to exempt police officers from the high-capacity magazine ban. In his words, "You can't give more ammo to the criminals"

A spokesman for the Governor's office called us to say, "We are still working out some details of the law and the exemption will be included."

I think it's very important that they don't exempt the police..........If you only need 7 rounds to defend yourself, that should be sufficient. I saw that as a 15 year police veteran. What's good for the goose......

As to gun registration, it's necessary to impose mandatory registration before confiscation can occur. If you allow people the illusion that they can keep their guns if they register them, they will register them. Then you can come back and confiscate what is registered. If you simply demand they turn them in, the non-complicance rate will be extraordinarily high and currently the government has no idea where all those guns are.

Imagine the logistics involved for the NYPD to find 7 rnd. mags for their duty weapons and collecting all the non-standard mags. They're in crisis at 1PP over this, I'll bet.

In the most strident warning over gun control to President Obama yet, the Utah Sheriffs' Association is pledging to go to war over any administration plan to take guns away, even if it means losing their lives.

Calling the Second Amendment a sacred right of citizens to protect themselves from "tyrannical subjugation," the association state elected sheriffs said in a new letter, "we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation."

Theirs is the first meaningful proof that some in law enforcement and the military are preparing to fight federal forces if the president wins his goal of sweeping gun control.

In a direct warning to Obama, the FBI and other agencies, the sheriffs wrote: "Make no mistake, as the duly-elected sheriffs our our respective counties, we will enforce the rights guaranteed to our citizens by the Constitution. No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights--in particular Amendment II--has given them."

While he wants an assault weapons ban and limits on ammo magazines, the president has not yet suggested he wants to confiscate guns.

The association revealed their concerns in a letter to the president just made public. It was sent on January 17. It opens by decrying the recent shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

But the group argued that guns are simply "instruments," and that they are needed by law-abiding citizens to sometimes subdue killers. "The citizenry must continue its ability to keep and bear arms, including arms that adequately protect them from all types of illegality," said the letter.

Several groups have argued that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are needed for self defense.

The association also called on Obama to push his efforts through Congress, not executive orders with no debate. "Please remember that the Founders of this great nation created the Constitution, and its accompanying Bill of Rights, an effort to protect citizens from all forms of tyrannical subjugation."

It turns out that NRA ad we partially defended last week was based on a false premise. The ad cited a Dec. 24 Breitbart.com story titled "School Obama's Daughters Attend Has 11 Armed Guards." Washington Post "fact checker" Glenn Kessler lived up to his job description for once and checked the facts:

[The claim] is based on the fact that the online directory for Sidwell Friends lists 11 people as working in the Security Department. Five are listed as "special police officer," while two are listed as "on call special police officer," which presumably means they do not work full-time. The directory also lists two weekend shift supervisors, one security officer and the chief of security.Under the District of Columbia General Order 308.7, a special police officer is a private commissioned police officer with arrest powers in the area that he or she protects. They may also be authorized to bear firearms--but it is not required. Security officers, by contrast, cannot carry firearms and in effect are watchmen. So five to seven security personnel in theory could be licensed to carry firearms.But we spoke to parents who said they had never seen a guard on campus with a weapon. And Ellis Turner, associate head of Sidwell Friends, told us emphatically: "Sidwell Friends security officers do not carry guns." (Note: this includes those listed as special police officers.)Kessler awards the NRA ad "four Pinocchios," which again underscores the problem with the "fact checking" genre: It assumes that all errors of fact are the result of bad faith. This looks to us like a misunderstanding rather than a lie--though it is to the Breitbart site's discredit that it has not updated the initial post.

An interesting little factoid has emerged from a new Fox News poll of U.S. voters: Personal sentiments are strong and defiant among many U.S. gun owners.

Question 46 in the wide-ranging survey of more than 1,000 registered voters asks if there is a gun in the household. Overall, 52 percent of the respondents said yes, someone in their home owned a gun. That number included 65 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of conservatives, 38 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of liberals.

But on to Question 47, addressed to those with a gun in their home: "If the government passed a law to take your guns, would you give up your guns or defy the law and keep your guns?"

The response: 65 percent reported they would "defy the law." That incudes 70 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of conservatives, 52 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of liberals.

Third post of the day-- there are some interesting implications in this piece worthy of our discussion I think.

What a 'Militia' Meant in Revolutionary America The Kentish Guards were defined by a sense of community, not by their guns or by government edict..By CHRIS BRAY

It's the discussion Americans can never settle: Does the Second Amendment convey an individual right to bear arms, or does it only establish the means to arm the state military institutions that the Founders knew as the militia and we know as the National Guard?

Those stark choices shrink our history into cartoonish simplicity. The real story is far more complex and illuminating. At the nation's beginning, there was a variety of middle ways regarding militias, a set of expectations and boundaries built in culture and enforced by community.

In a box at the Rhode Island Historical Society, a contract describes the creation of a militia in Kent County during the crisis year of 1774. "We the subscribers do unanimously join to establish and constitute a military independent company," reads an agreement signed by dozens of local men. "That on every Tuesday and Saturday in the afternoon for the future, or as long as occasion require it shall be judg'd necessary or expedient a Meeting to be held at the House of William Arnold in East Greenwich for the Purpose aforesaid."

You and Bill and I hereby agree to make an army, and let's meet at Bill's house to practice.

Formed by an agreement between armed individuals, the Kentish Guards became a militia organization without being a government institution, though the members would soon approach the colonial government of Rhode Island for a charter. It was a "militia of association," built in equal measure from multiple foundations. The men of the Kentish Guards weren't a militia merely because they each owned guns, and they weren't a militia because the government said they were. They became a militia when they talked among themselves, agreed on rules and a shared purpose, and signed a mutual contract. They were a militia as a community.

The agreement to make a militia empowered its members and restrained them at the same time, allowing them to act but demanding that they act together in considered ways. The early American militia was neither purely individual nor purely governmental; rather, it was deeply rooted in a particular place, making the militia a creature that stood with one foot in government and one foot firmly in civil society.

In this social vision, government couldn't properly take guns from the men who then made up political society, but those men couldn't properly use guns in ways that transgressed community values and expectations. The bearing of arms was a socially regulated act.

That mixed reality grew from a social world that looks nothing like our own. The first few American police departments were still many decades in the future, and the victims of crime could only shout for their neighbors.

Whole neighborhoods raced into the street in response to a cry for help, and victims could personally bring the accused before a local magistrate. Communities turned out to face military threats, neighbors joining neighbors for mutual defense. Adulterers and wife-beaters were often punished in the ritual called skimminton or charivari, bound to a fence post and paraded in shame by their jeering neighbors.

With this kind of local experience, the bearing of arms was an individual act undertaken in carefully shared and monitored ways. The historian T.H. Breen has described the citizen-soldiers of colonial Massachusetts as members of a "covenanted militia," bound by agreement.

Another historian, Steven Rosswurm, has described the negotiations between Pennsylvania's Revolutionary government and the ordinary men, serving as privates in the militia, who formed a "committee of privates" to present the terms under which they would perform armed service. Government did not just command; states and communities talked, bargained and agreed. Individuals were both free to act and responsible to one another for their actions, in a constantly debated balance.

In the predawn hours of April 19, 1775, militiamen of Lexington, Mass., gathered around their commander. Capt. John Parker greeted each man, writes the historian David Hackett Fischer in his book "Paul Revere's Ride," as "neighbor, kinsman, and friend," joining them to decide what they would do about the British regulars marching toward their town. "The men of Lexington . . . gathered around Captain Parker on the Common, and held an impromptu town meeting in the open air." They had a commander, and he joined them for discussion.

Today, we are presented with a false choice in which either the government bans assault weapons or an unfettered individual right makes it possible for a monster to spray bullets into schoolhouses. The forgotten middle ways of our nation's earlier days, that world of mutuality, excluded more people than it included, and its shortcomings are well known. But it also had real strengths, and the benefits of a strong civil society are lost to us when we expect government to address and solve our every problem.

Mr. Bray, a former Army infantry sergeant, is an adjunct assistant professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif.

Jason Mattera caught up with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg at the US Conference of Mayors on January 18. Bloomberg has been making headlines lately for pushing gun control, and New York State passed one of the most sweeping gun bans in the nation earlier in January.

Mattera confronts Mayor Bloomberg and asks him to disarm his praetorian guard, in the spirit of gun control. Bloomberg balks.

“Uh, we’ll get back to you on that,” Bloomberg says. Bloomberg’s five visible, and very large and armed, bodyguards get between Mattera and the mayor.

But that’s not where the story ends.

Once Mattera’s brief conversation with Bloomberg is over, he leaves the scene.

And one of Bloomberg’s body guards follows him.

Though the confrontation took place in Washington DC, NYPD Officer Stockton claims that he has “security jurisdiction.” Officer Stockton then tries to get Jason’s personal information. Mattera refuses, so Officer Stockton follows him down the street. The officer is clearly trying to intimidate Mattera for asking Bloomberg a question that made the mayor uncomfortable. There is no reason to believe that the officer is acting without orders from Mayor Bloomberg.

Mattera has been playing clips from the video today on the Andrea Tantaros Show with Jason Mattera. Watch the full video here.